On Psychic Flim-Flam
Psychics, so-called, are usually terrible at making accurate predictions unless they are either very general or the sort of predictions most people could make. Yes, there will be a notorious serial killer brought to book, if not in the United States then somewhere in the world; a plane crash with massive loss of life; an elderly politician dies in office, resigns on health grounds or is ousted...who could that be?
There are countless numbers of these con men, and just as many if not even more con women who are eager to take your money on-line or in person. One of the most notorious psychic flim-flam artists of the modern era was Sylvia Browne, who died in November 2013. Browne predicted she would die aged 88; she was 77. Perhaps most notoriously she told the mother of Amanda Berry that her daughter was dead. Amanda vanished off the face of the Earth on April 1, 2003. The following year, Browne gave Louwana Miller the bad news on a TV show. As none of Amanda’s clothing or other property was missing, any policeman anywhere in the world would have made the same prediction, though probably not to Louwana’s face.
Of course, we all know what happened next, along with two other girls, Amanda escaped from captivity on May 6, 2013, all three having been subjected to a decade of unimaginable horrors by Ariel Castro.
Even more thematic than Browne was the popular UK psychic Christian Dion, popular until he went bankrupt in October 1992. If any of these con artists had any genuine psychic powers, bookmakers and casinos would all go bankrupt, but they don’t make their money predicting the future, they make it scamming the gullibles, who never seem the slightest deterred by the constant stream of negative results.